Hiero clutched the old man’s brown sleeve suddenly. Foam Girl was now only a few hundred yards off the tangle of plants which made up the actual edge where forest met sea.
“There’s something coming from the west! I can’t probe it! There’s a mind guard, a big one, like the one on that Unclean ship you sank! They’re coming fast.” He felt sudden anguish. What was there he had failed to do?
Aldo instantly turned and rapped out an order to the captain. “Gimp, put us ashore, the ship too, and get your crew mustered. Hurry, or we’re all dead men!” There was no benevolence on his face now, and the high, black cheekbones were ramparts of the decision. His great eyes blazed with imperious will.
Gimp now volleyed orders in every direction, at the same time aiding in rigging the arrow engine personally. The one-eyed mate, Blutho, took the helm as the two great crescent sails rose and were hauled up full so they filled to the breeze. Foam Girl put her nose into a trough, rose on the next long swell, and rushed headlong for the tree-girt shore.
Over the hubbub on deck and the swirl of activity, Hiero became aware of Luchare pressed against his side, buckling on his weapons. I failed, he thought to her as he adjusted his battle helmet. It did not occur to him to speak.
Nonsense, came her calm, answer. No one else warned us at all. You’ve carried all the weight, mostly alone, for weeks. Even as his brain received the answer, he felt wonder at both the ease of her message and the closeness of their combined mental-physical contact. Being completely male, he could not help his mind going further. I wonder if we could yet, he thought, toying with the idea of love-making simultaneously by mind and body, something he had not so far dared attempt.
Probably, came the prompt answer, but this is no time for it, you clown! Go get Klootz ready. I’ll watch the bear. It was like a (friendly) dash of ice water. He blinked and came back to the present.
The big morse was wild with excitement, and Hiero had to use his own mind hard, like a curb, to quiet him down. Barely was he saddled when they struck.
Foam Girl nosed straight and hard into a solid mass of outthrust roots and stunted, mangrovelike trees with a prolonged, grating” crunch. Many men on deck, who were concentrating on their tasks, were jolted off their feet, but nothing worse happened. Fortunately, the sea ran deep here, right up to the shore, and this made their crash landing fairly easy.
“Ashore, everyone!” came Gimp’s stentorian shouting. He had conferred with Aldo constantly as they raced in, for, like any really good gambler, he never hesitated a moment to cut his losses, A squad of hardy rascals hurled themselves off the bowsprit, chopping madly with axes and heavy cutlasses at the packed vegetation. Nothing but a rat or small monkey could have got through that tangle of growth unaided. Behind this gang gathered most of the crew, now armed and loaded with hastily snatched-up supplies and emergency gear. Gimp and Blutho led them, and behind them, in turn, were Aldo, the girl, and the priest, who led the morse and the bear, though “led” was not how Gorm saw it. All of the humans, save those using the axes, were watching down coast to the west. As they looked, the black, slim shape they had grown to dread appeared, nosing around a point not a mile away, white foam curling under the sharp prow.
At the sight, Gimp himself seized a broadaxe and, shoving his men aside, fell upon the green matter before him like a fury, using great hewing strokes which severed foot-thick vines like so much string. Those of the men who could find a footing near him redoubled their own efforts. Brother Aldo noticed the arrow engine crew still stoutly manning the machine on the poop and now ordered them away with the others.
From the Unclean ship, now coming like a storm, a distant-screech came down the wind. At the same time, a flare of vivid blue light winked from her foredeck.
“The lightning gun!” Hiero and Luchare cried together. A hundred yards off the stern, a column of steam rose suddenly from a white-capped swell.
“Come on now,” Gimp screamed, now out of sight in the green growth. “We’ve cut a path for you and it widens. Shake your stumps, you lazy bastard whoresons!” This latter epithet was addressed to his loyal crew, who now scrambled off the bowsprit like so many ants. Behind them, Hiero led and urged Klootz forward, Luchare walking on the other side of the bull’s head. Gorm leaped off the deck and followed the men in a second. Brother Aldo, nimble as a cricket, clambered after him.
Klootz trod warily over the tangle of ropes and discarded gear at the bow. The priest and the girl soothed him with soft words as the great brute cautiously examined the jungle ahead. Only Aldo was yet still in sight, beckoning them eagerly on. For some reason, the forest’s warmth struck Hiero only now; it was as if they were entering a furnace, though a damp one. Klootz paused, hindquarters bunching.
Whoever was aiming the lightning gun finally got his range. There was a ripping crash, and looking back in horror, the humans saw the after half of the little cabin simply vanish in a cloud of white incandescence. The wave of awful, attendant heat almost scorched their back hair.
The bull morse let out a terrified bawl and sprang straight forward off the ship, dragging the two with him as they clung frantically to the reins. More by luck than anything else, the animal headed straight into the ragged gap cut by the crew in the foliage. Brother Aldo leaped aside just in time to avoid being trampled to death and, picking himself quickly up, scuttled in their wake. In a second, the empty Foam Girl, sails and cordage slatting in the offshore breeze, was the only sign that anyone had been there. The smoke of a brisk fire ascended into the morning sunlight from her blazing cabin and midships. With a sudden rush, the fire ran up the stays to the peak of the main mast, and in another instant, the peaked sail burst into a flaming blossom of orange light. The crackling bolts of the lightning gun continued to strike through the smoke and haze, but the electric charges simply blasted holes at random in. the green curtain of plants on the shore; for the gunners, though now very close, could actually see nothing. At length the order to cease fire was given. The black ship lay hove to, close in; while from her deck, sharp eyes tried in vain to discern through the smoke what had become of their prey. It was a patently useless exercise, and soon the lean hull turned, the hidden engines started, and the Unclean ship swept away back down the wooded coast to the west. In a few minutes she was out of sight. The now furiously burning Foam Girl sent a column of reeking black smoke high in the air, from whence it was bent inland by the wind, over the tops of the enormous trees. Nothing moved on the shore, save a few small birds.
Far away, in a crypt deep under the earth and cobbles of old Neeyana, a figure turned away from, an instrument board with an exclamation of disgust. “Is this your vaunted efficiency?” the hooded shape hissed to another standing near. “The Yellow Circle would show the Blue, eh? I’ll have a word with your Masters in due season!” S’duna of the Blue Circle, enraged and frustrated, left the chamber, his cold rage going before him like a noxious cloud. All who felt it shrank away and hid themselves, but elsewhere in the Unclean citadel, new orders were given and the servants of the Yellow Circle sprang to new action. Another stroke unaccountably had failed, but the chase would not be given up, not while one of the Dark Brotherhood remained.
The camp that night, set deep in the canopy of the great trees, was not a cheerful one. The seamen, long used to the open air, felt the dank heat and the smothering darkness as doubly oppressive and frightening, even though Gimp and Blutho maintained a stern discipline and also continually pointed out that no lives had been lost. Both Hiero and Luchare nursed bad bruises from being dragged through the thickets for a hundred yards in Klootz’s initial panic. Two small fires kept some of the gloom away, and a low barrier of fallen logs and branches encircled the camp, providing at least some psychological protection, if nothing more.